JUNE 23 – Although they graduated in the same year from the same high school, Gabrielle Smith and John Mitchell met by chance at the bride’s sister’s birthday party, years later, in 2002. “His friend was hitting on me, and he was trying to help him,” the bride recalls. Five days later, Smith coincidentally transferred to the same college that Mitchell attended, and the Long Island pair has been together ever since. Smith, a human resources recruiter for JetBlue in Queens, and Mitchell, a bonds broker in Manhattan, wed at St. Raymond’s Church in East Rockaway before flying to Tahiti for two weeks.
ESSENTIALS
Dress: a strapless, A-line Alfred Angelo design
First dance: Frank Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon”
Favors: a donation to the NYFD Burn Center